Let's face it. Writing is the easiest, most-rewarding, wonderful career to have. To be a writer one must simply:
- Rise at the first rays of sunlight while the fresh dew is still on the grass.
- Slide on those comfortable slippers, selectively placed the night before and the most comfortable bathrobe money can buy.
- Casually saunter down to the breakfast nook to enjoy a fresh cup of (insert favorite coffee here).
- Warm a scone (or insert favorite pastry item here).
- Gaze out the window at the woodland creatures starting their day, or your poor 9-to-5 neighbor trying to catch the garbage truck before it passes his house.
- Then after a brief stop at the water closet, you are off to your writer's retreat... where strategically placed knickknacks (aka miscellaneous crap) abound to bolster your muse.
- Once there you fire up computer, or load your antique Royal Typewriter, or sharpen your pencil.
- Then you write while characters, story, and emotion come at you like gazelles running from a grass fire on the Serengeti for the rest of the day in a thunderous symphony of self-satisfaction without so much as a single doubt that you are at the top of your game -- and that your writing has never been more visceral and alive.
If this sounds like your day. Congratulations, and do not tell anyone.. for they will not only hate you, but probably try to find an incantation that will result in locusts removing the flesh from your bones. At the very least, your barista (who is also a writer, unless placed there in witness relocation -- which they won't tell you anyway) will put skim milk in your latte when you ask for soy and NOT tell you. (Evil right?)
It is no surprise, that writing is probably the hardest thing you will ever do. Sure, it seems easy enough on the surface; like driving a car when you are a little kid. "All I need to do is turn that wheel thing back and forth. Then show people my middle finger." The reality is that it is very, very difficult. I don't say this to dissuade you, on the contrary, I am a very much for championing new writers, or those that have lost their way.
Here is the thing though... many beginning writers spend an exorbitant amount of time not actually writing. Crazy right? I mean they love writing, so why aren't they writing? Because it is HARD! There are a million and a half forums out there for writers of every genre, and undisciplined (and many disciplined writers from time to time) get distracted. Would be writers get to talking about how to get and agent, manager, or how to self-publish, etc. even before they have completed a single manuscript. While learning how to get an agent, etc is certainly a reasonable thing to learn about before you go out to blow the doors off the marketplace... what you really need to do is get to know your craft intimately. That craft, is NOT making writing friends on Facebook, or talking about your yet uncompleted, but great, novella at a library book sale -- it is actually writing it!
There are a billion books and websites out there that claim to be able to teach you how to become a professional wordsmith; but at the end of the day...ultimately you have got to simply sit down and write your heart out! Write good stuff. Write bad stuff. Write awful stuff! Then do it again. For the reward for an actual writer comes not from movie deals, book deals, signing autographs, or hanging out with Johnny Depp for his 50th birthday party. Instead, it comes from bringing a blank page to life in a torrential creative downpour.... and that, my friends, should be enough to keep you in this game for life come rain or shine.
Yes, writing a blog is also a way that writer's can be distracted from honing their craft. To those who would like to point that out I can only quote one of my favorite professors:
"That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger. Tell me, are you incapable of restraining yourself, or do you take pride in being an insufferable know-it-all?"
- Professor Severus Snape
